Book Review – How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

How I Live Now was not at all what I expected. I guess I am not entirely sure what I expected after reading a short review of the book, but incest and run on sentences weren’t it. The first thing that struck me as I began reading this book was how awkward it was to read paragraphs with no sentence breaks. And while I did get used to this eventually, I am not sure that the technique was all that effective.

I guess the romance was intended to be exotic or something, but to me, it was just kind of creepy. Perhaps it because my cousins are all much younger than me, but I really can’t even let my mind wander to falling in love with one of them. I will have to read some other reviews I guess and then maybe see if I can get a clue somewhere from the author about what the intention here was. I get that war is messed up and that it does things to people and that this is an exploration of possibilities. . .I just didn’t appreciate them I guess.

Overall, I am a bit disappointed in this YA book, but I understand why some people might like it. Our teenage years are awkward and war is terrible and this combination of the two is one way to explore all of that. I will try another Meg Rosoff bookh because I have heard such good things about her writing. I wanted to get this posted before I surfed around a bit to see what others have written so you would get my initial reactions and not something someone else suggested. I guess I missed this one. . .